Social currency in the b2b world 2013 building strong brands

Social Currency in the B2B World:
Building Strong Brands

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CONTENTS

3

What is Social Currency

5

Six Case Studies that Exemplifies Each Social Currency Behavior

12

Conclusions

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WHAT IS SOCIAL CURRENCY?
In 2010, Vivaldi Partners Group pioneered the term “Social Currency” with a landmark
study on its importance in driving brand equity, price premium, and loyalty.

2010

2012
How brands and businesses

can prosper in a digitally
connected world

We defined Social Currency as the degree
to which customers share a brand
or information about a brand with others.

2012

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SOCIAL
CURRENCY

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Social Currency is driven by Six Social Behaviors:

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INFORMATION
CONVERSATION

The degree to which people seek, receive & share information about the brand
How often people converse about the brand
How much people promote & stand up for the brand

AFFILIATION

The level of connectedness people feel to a brand & surrounding community

→

ADVOCACY
IDENTITY
UTILITY

The extent to which people use the brand to communicate who they are
How much people interact with the brand & surrounding community to extract practical value
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WHY DOES SOCIAL CURRENCY MATTERS?
Social Currency matters for B2B companies, because every business is social.
Big data, social, and mobile will form the basis of competitive advantage
for all companies.

VOLUME

Today there are two xenobytes of data (created every day)…
By 2015, it will be 40 times more than today.

VELOCITY

Every day the world creates as much data as it did through
all of time until 2003. We’re used to data that fits nicely into rows
and columns….but 80% of what we collected today is unstructured.

VERACITY

All of this data, conversations, photos…what do they mean?
What is the context? By 2015, 80% of all data will be uncertain and ambiguous.
(The three V’s are adapted from Ginni Rometty, Chairman, President, and CEO of IBM)

90%

of all purchases are subjected to social influences

30 bn

predicted revenues for social commerce market in 2015

59%

of B2B professionals use their smartphone to gather purchase information on core decisions

46%

of B2B professionals regularly follow industry discussion forums online
WITHOUT A DOUBT, B2B BRANDS ARE COMPETING ON SOCIAL GROUNDS
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SIX CASE STUDIES THAT EXEMPLIFIES EACH SOCIAL CURRENCY BEHAVIOR

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UTILITY
American Express’s OPEN Forum creates utility value for small business owners

Started at the end of 2006 as a “forum dedicated to the art of marketing”
and with a mission to help companies transform their businesses,
OPEN Forum has now evolved into a full-fledged community of (mostly) small
business owners organized around identifying business opportunities
and advice. Besides the common commenting, sending messages to other members,
starting discussions, reading articles, and watching videos, there are more
advanced features, such as: the Idea Hub (“a digital trading post of ideas and insights
from industry experts and owners”), the ConnectodexSM (sort-of a virtual rolodex),
Seeks and Provides section (allows members to post exactly what they do and what
they’re looking for), Pulse (a tool for finding small business insights on Twitter), etc.
Some basic features on the forum are available to the public, but most are reserved
for the members; the owners of the American Express OPEN business cards.
#1 American Express OPEN Forum
Twitter Follower – 52,398
Facebook Fans – 220,709
Unique Visitors – 198,970
Inbound Links – 67,050

#2 Intuit Small Business Blog
#8 Cisco
#16 GE Ecomagination
#50 SAP

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INFORMATION

All information, including unstructured and ambiguous information from
social channels help

SAP strengthens its top-line by creating social relevance among their customer base.
By using its community network, social media channels, and its website, SAP
is leveraging the interaction among its user base.
FROM: PUSH

TO: PULL

1- way Unsolicited
Promotional Content
Interruption
$346 cost/lead

2- way Sought out
Value-added Content
Engagement
$135 cost/lead

SAP Community Network

SAP changed from a one-way marketing “push” that was unsolicited, promotional,
and interruptive, to a two-way “pull” where its user base sought out information
that was valuable and created engagement. This more than halved its cost per lead
from $346 to $135.
Also, according to our Social Currency research, 41% of SAP customers think that they
get valuable information from other users, further strengthening the brand.

SAP on Social Networks

SAP Website

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ADVOCACY
It is not about followers or net promoters, it’s about advocacy to others’
social network

• Corporate Risk and Insurance Management
• Human Capital Consulting
• Reinsurance
AON, a corporate risk and insurance company, uses net promoter scores (NPS)
to identify (positive) influencers. However, it does not stop there, AON engages
these influencers in providing testimonials and case studies. This customergenerated content is used across a wide range of social channels. As a result,
AON is able to change influencers into advocates for its brand.

Client Promise

Pass It On

Global Service Day

24% NPS Increase Videos Testimonials

3,200 photos 580,000 questions answered

60,000 people, 120 countries
Engagement Community

8


CONVERSATION
Conversation drives highly efficient brand-building – “earned media”

Corning is a glass and ceramics manufacturer that stirred Conversation with its B2B
viral video. “A Day Made of Glass” has over 21 million views on YouTube
and Corning even came out with a “sequel” to the popular video. The videos highlight
the uses of Corning glass products in a day set sometime in the future, reinforcing
the brand message and highlighting its innovation. The video also made a big PR splash,
creating even more buzz and Conversation for Corning. By using the viral video
to drive brand-building efforts, Corning has seen real business results, including overall
growth of 14% and specialty glass growth of an incredible 68%.

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AFFILIATION
Community initiatives drive brand building

Philips “Innovation in Light” community on LinkedIn is one of the largest B2B networks
delivering community benefits to members, such as chats, information, connection, etc.
Members include everyone from industry experts to consultants and executives.
The LinkedIn group shares news, white papers, tools and the latest thinking to help
its members.
The LinkedIn Group now boasts over 47,000 members who are highly engaged with each
other and in discussions about lighting innovations. This creates a strong affiliation with
other members, as they share with the purpose of the same goal.

46,000 members
500,000 page views
3,500 discussions started

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IDENTITY
Enable identity-building efforts

GE Executives are leaders in the social-media world Its CMO, Beth Comstock, is socially
active with a devoted following on her Twitter and her regularly penned posts on LinkedIn.
She’s not the only one at GE with a strong social Identity. Mark Begor of GE Capital’s real
estate business produces a weekly 5-10 minute video for this division. Louraine Bolsinger,
VP and GM of GE Aviation, developed a 360* blog where all her direct reports blog with her.
These initiatives at GE are prime examples of how people use the brand to communicate
who they are.

Produces a weekly
5-10 minute
video for his division.

Began blogging a few years ago;
developed a 360 blog where all
her direct reports blog with her;
12 regular contributors

The Producer: Mark Begor, GE Capital’s real estate business
“I talk about what I learned during the week, about a great deal we’ve closed, and the status
of the business. I also add comments about employees that I would like to recognize.”

The Distributor: Louraine Bolsinger, VP and GM of GE Aviation
“It took time to get my audience actively involved. I had to find my voice and become more
conversational, more easy going”

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CONCLUSIONS

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WHAT SHOULD A B2B COMPANY DO TO INCREASE ITS SOCIAL CURRENCY?
1) Audit. Conduct a strategic diagnostic. Establish criteria and audit each asset
(Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc)

Typical Criteria:

Date created
# of fans, followers, subscribers, members, etc.
Last interaction date
Frequency of interactions (From “Daily” to “No longer updated”)
Last post date /Frequency of posts
Health status
Owner and contact information

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WHAT SHOULD A B2B COMPANY DO TO INCREASE ITS SOCIAL CURRENCY?
2) Evaluate. See how social currency drives brand equity and impacts brand
contribution in the market place. Map out your brand strategy objectives
and identify the dimensions of social currency that drive the objectives.

..drive brand equity….

..impact biz results
IDENTITY
AFFILIATION

41

AW
AR
EN

%

%

90

CONVERSATION

10 0 %

ADVOCACY

AFFILIATION

IDENTITY

%

32

28

%

43%

UTILITY

98%

INFORMATION

CONVERSATION

46

PURCH
ASE
to
56%
LO
YA

Y
LT

INFORMATION

38%

%

DERATION
NSI
4 4%
CO %
to
57
S
ES %

ADVOCACY

79%

85

UTILITY

IDENTITY

28

ID E

3%

NS

23%

%
AFFILIATION

%

CO

RATION to PURC

ADVOCACY

H

19

Basic social behaviors….

UTILITY

E
AS INFORMATION

CONVERSATION

14


WHAT SHOULD A B2B COMPANY DO TO INCREASE ITS SOCIAL CURRENCY?
3) Create. Execute an agenda to build your business and brand
through Social Currency.

Come up with a way to enable consumers – be it fans or employees - to Comment, Upload
and Consume their content.
Also, have your leaders enable Social Currency in their organizations by setting an example.
Leaders today need to excel at co-creation and collaboration

McKinsey,
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What Vivaldi Partners Group recommends?
Companies can also build tech platforms to enable key customer-facing processes.
At Vivaldi Partners Group, we have created the Digital Cockpit to allow companies
to improve its customer-facing processes
Typical Use Cases:
Brand Management:
•
•
•
•

Brand Tracking / Research
Brand Story Development
Brand Engagement
Employee Branding

Customer Insights/ Management:
•
•
•
•

“Netnographies”
Crowd-intelligence
Real-time Trend Tracking
Customer Issue Resolution

Communications:
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•
•
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Community Management
Real-time Content Creation
Crisis Management
Customer Amplification

Innovation/ New Demand:
•
•

•
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New Product Testing
Data Mining
Real-time
Competitive Analysis
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Acknowledgement
We’d like to thank everyone at Vivaldi Partners Group who worked on this report,
as well as our research partners. “Social Currency in the B2B World” is part
of our ongoing research into the impact of Social Currency on brands and businesses.
You can find all of our past research on our website: www.vivaldipartners.com

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